Winifred Doris Blackwell (1 May 1891 – 14 January 1983) was an Australian memoirist. She was the co-writer of Alice on the Line. [1]
Contents
Winifred Doris Blackwell (1 May 1891 – 14 January 1983) was an Australian memoirist. She was the co-writer of Alice on the Line. [1]
Doris Blackwell was the eldest daughter of Thomas Bradshaw and Atalanta "Attie" Bradshaw. [2] Thomas Bradshaw served as postmaster and officer-in-charge of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station from 1899 to 1908.
Blackwell was born in 1891 in Adelaide, South Australia. At the age of 8, Blackwell and her family moved to Stuart (now Alice Springs) where her father worked at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station. The journey was long and difficult, consisting of a train ride to Oodnadatta followed by a 300-mile buggy ride, making camp along the way. [3]
Blackwell remembered this journey as the "greatest adventure of her young life", although the novelty soon wore off. She said:
In all that vast land there was not one fence, or any track other than the one we used. But we knew that civilisation was ahead of us, for we followed the slender iron poles supporting the two wires of the Overland Telegraph line - the reason for our journey. The line stretched ahead interminably, so far that we could not distinguish the poles from one another where they ran into the horizon. [4]
Upon their arrival, Blackwell soon found herself enjoying life in Alice Springs, saying that "Alice's tranquil charm converted all of us to her side". She would ride out daily on her horse to explore her surroundings. [4] Because there was no established school in the area, her mother employed a governess and set up a schoolroom next door to the staff dining room which doubled as a courtroom, her father acting as the local magistrate. [3] [5]
The family employed several governesses throughout their time in Alice Springs, notably Mabel Mary Taylor. The family also employed a number of Aboriginal Australians within their household, with Blackwell recalling:
The native staff included a rather elastic number of houseboys, shepherds, cows and sheep, hewers of wood and carriers of water, scullery maids for the staff kitchen, two housemaids and a nurse girl in our home. [4]
One significant figure in this time was Amelia Kunoth, the grandmother of Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, who worked as a companion and nurse for the children. She was left heartbroken when the family left in 1908. She requested to come with them; but the Bradshaw's denied her request, believing that it would be a mistake to take her away from her people and her land. [3] Kunoth and Blackwell would continue to write to each other for much of their lives. [6]
Despite leaving Alice Springs at the age of 18, it is said that Blackwell never lost the "spell of the Inland". In 1922 she married Alex Blackwell, a World War I veteran who had served as a stretcher-bearer in Europe alongside her brother, Mort. [3] [7]
In the 1960s Blackwell worked with journalist Douglas Lockwood to write Alice on the Line, about her family's life on the old telegraph line, [4] [3] which was first published in 1965. [8]
She died on 14 January 1983 in Adelaide, and is buried in Brighton (Saint Jude) cemetery.[ citation needed ]
Alice Springs is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; the third largest settlement after Darwin and Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd, wife of the telegraph pioneer Sir Charles Todd. Known colloquially as "The Alice" or simply "Alice", the town is situated roughly in Australia's geographic centre. It is nearly equidistant from Adelaide and Darwin.
The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was a telegraphy system to send messages over long distances using cables and electric signals. It spanned 3200 kilometres between Darwin, in what is now the Northern Territory of Australia, and Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Completed in 1872, it allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world. When it was linked to the Java-to-Darwin submarine telegraph cable several months later, the communication time with Europe dropped from months to hours; Australia was no longer so isolated from the rest of the world. The line was one of the great engineering feats of 19th-century Australia and probably the most significant milestone in the history of telegraphy in Australia.
Rosalie Lynette Kunoth-Monks, also known as Ngarla Kunoth, was an Australian film actress, Aboriginal activist and politician.
Frederich Emil Renner (1821–1893) was a doctor who dispensed medical advice to the team working on the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in the Northern Territory of South Australia. His practice extended from Port Augusta to the Roper River, a distance of approximately 2,600 kilometres (1,600 mi).
Douglas Wright Lockwood was an Australian newspaperman and author.
The Alice Springs Telegraph Station is located within the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve, four kilometres north of the Alice Springs town centre in the Northern Territory of Australia. Established in 1872 to relay messages between Darwin and Adelaide, it is the original site of the first European settlement in central Australia. It was one of twelve stations along the Overland Telegraph Line.
Hamilton Downs Station was a cattle station west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is now a youth camp.
Jose Petrick OAM is a British-born Australian historian and community advocate living in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
The Stuart Arms Hotel was the first hotel in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Located on the corner of Parsons and Todd Street, it was centre of social life for 96 years.
Ida Standley was the first school teacher in Alice Springs, Australia. For 15 years, from 1914 to 1929, she worked at The Bungalow. Standley was appointed MBE for her services to children's welfare.
Edith Espie was a Western Arrernte foster mother and lay social worker in Alice Springs, Australia.
The Pioneer Theatre, also known as "Pioneer Walk-In Theatre" and "Snow Kenna's Walk-In Picture Theatre", was a theatre in the Northern Territory of Australia located in Alice Springs. The building was built by Leslie 'Snow' Kenna in 1942 and closed, as a theatre, in 1984 and now operates as the Alice Springs YHA.
Gerhardt Andreas Johannsen was a stonemason, builder and pastoralist in the Northern Territory.
St. Mary's Hostel, formerly Mount Blatherskite Hostel (1946–47), commonly known simply as St Mary's, was an Australian Board of Missions hostel in Alice Springs from 1947 to 1972. Its residents were mostly Aboriginal children, including some who were taken as wards of the state because they were half-caste. In 1972, coming under new management, it was renamed St Mary's Children's Village (1972–1980).
Sister Eileen Heath was an Anglican Deaconess who worked as the superintendent of St. Mary's Hostel in Alice Springs from 1946 - 1955 and was a tireless campaigner for Aboriginal Welfare who took a stand against her own church in the 1940s.
Simon Rieff was one of the first miners to open up The Granites goldfield in the Northern Territory of Australia before moving to Alice Springs to become a property developer and business man.
Ah Hong was a Chinese market gardener who spent most of his life in Alice Springs, and was a well regarded figure in an era of considerable prejudice towards Chinese people in Australia.
Honeymoon Gap is a small gap 1 km south of Larapinta Drive, 14 km west of Alice Springs, on Roe Creek, 8 km south of where it cuts through Simpsons Gap. The Arrernte name for the Gap is Angatyepe and it is associated with Perentie (Goanna) Dreaming. There is an outstation nearby that shares this name nearby.
Amelia Kunoth née Pavey was an Aboriginal Australian woman who developed well-known cattle stations in Central Australia, including Utopia, Bond Springs, Hamilton Downs and Tempe Downs.
Mabel Mary Taylor is best remembered for the 18 months that she spent in Alice Springs as the governess to the family of Thomas Bradshaw, the postmaster at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station between 1905 and 1907. During her period with the Bradshaw family she wrote a series of diaries and letters which were published, in a compiled form, in 2011. Her records furnish some lively accounts of people and daily life in the early years of Alice Springs, which was then called Stuart, when it was a tiny one-hotel settlement and give details about the children she taught, the clothes she wore, remote places she visited, passing explorers and missionaries and the active social life of the settlement.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)